


You Need A Laugh, or Two

by Phritzie



Series: You Wouldn't Steal A Heart [4]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, Heresy, Joshing Cymraeg A Teensy Bit, Multi, Open Relationships, Some Plot, Three Angry Men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 07:57:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13947183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Honesty, avarice, fear of rejection. He tangles with all of those, when he tangles with him.





	You Need A Laugh, or Two

“If you really find it necessary to bother me while I'm on campus, could you please choose a less _infuriating_ reason?”

Wahisietel freely shared his alarm, speech rough from self-professed sprinting as he outran Sliske's latest fit.

“Look. I understand you. He's mad for a human at the moment,” he seethed, rattling something that sounded like a chainlink fence in the background, “and it's getting out of hand.” Lowered in conspiracy, his whisper noisily disagreed with the receiver. “Won't even _visit_ them.”

That _was_ strange, loathe as he was to be involved with any of it. “Go do a few laps around Chatham and I'll have a cab around.”

“ _Thank_ you–”

There was a tone of anticlimax in the descending bellchime that rung when he hung up.

Azzanadra contemplated the crowd of students growing outside his door.

It was a few minutes passed the beginning of his office hours. He'd soon have fearful undergrads climbing up the walls to get in through the window if he didn't address their concerns.

But knowing Sliske was on the chase again... a recognition of need had reawakened. He couldn't be sure it hadn't been stowing away in him for a while. Rubbing a temple, he frowned at the stack of exams to be graded on his desk.

_Well._

Someone timidly knocked on the frosted glass window of his door and, reflexively, he crossed his legs, beckoning them. "Whoever arrived first. Come in."

_Maybe we can distract each other._

"Roarke," he sighed gustily, and gestured to the eames chair opposite his desk as one of his best students edged inside, eyes low and obviously uncomfortable. "Let's start with the rubbish you left in my tray last week."

 

* * *

 

He considered refusing the invitation, knowing that the content of the visit would follow a predictable format. _I'll get a rise out of Azzy, they'll ring me dry for being irresponsible, perhaps the police will come round. Blah, blah blah..._

But it had been a year. A long one, at that. Since they'd touched. Or even spoken. He was curious enough to make the easy translocation.

When Sliske saw him standing in the lobby arguing with the front desk, wearing the face of a long dead cobbler, it didn't punch the wind out of him like he'd thought it might. That was a little disappointing.

After all, Wahisietel was just as well-disguised, peering around the breakfast bar scratching his face. That salt and pepper beard shed an impossible abstract of particles – _is it really human skin once it's left? Will those hairs retain their shape in an hour, a day? –_ over a massive hot-holder full of Belgian waffles.

So his shapeshifting prowess, not uncommon among their kind, wasn't inspiring rapturous lust.

And they were both wearing _tweed_ , despicably.  _I'd never grow weak over elbow patches._

No.

What really left him breathless was when he raised a hand in greeting and Azzanadra promptly cornered him in the lift, ripping the hat Felix had given him from his head with an accusing utterance of rage.

In retrospect, the ride up had been far too short.

That was probably why he was so insensibly determined to fuck him blind now.

“But my viewers love me,” Sliske sneered dotingly, licking beaded stripes of moisture off a paler, aquiline nose. “Isn't that a good thing?”

Icewater crashed over his back. The chilling spray brought a hard tremor to Azzanadra's voice as he snarled in his face. "Then you've had your time as the public's digital darling. Quit while you're ahead."

Well, alright, they _started_ in the lift. It ended before they could make it to the bed, so he had suggested that they take a moment to clean up.  _For your ever-precious preoccupation with decorum, my dear._

It shaped up to be a short break.

More of a transition in roles.

And the tap had officially run cold, but that wasn't about to deter either of them.

Sliske wrenched Azzanadra's knee up, five demanding indents pricking the soft underside. Little more than frenzy and will kept their faces abreast of the paralyzing blast from the showerhead. "I'll decide when I'm done."

"You–"

He worked him into the corner, beyond irritated by the unending criticisms he'd been determined to worm into their intimacy. _Shut_. He drove his hips in a bit harder. _Up_.

"–always do, but this– _damn you_ , this time–"

The filthy noises spilling out of them were negating, at least spiritually, his considerate gesture to bathe together.

"Consider the _consequences_ you–daft– _bastard!_ " Voice losing its fire, snuffed out by the pleasure pinching each syllable, Azzanadra husked needful demands. “ _Fuck! More_ , move _faster_ –"

Hotels hadn't changed much, disappointingly. Most of them still followed the same sterile corporate format, lacking in individuality, only set apart by the occasional injection of stylistic nuttery.

_Magenta drapes? Honestly._

But Sliske was thankful for nonslip bath tiles and an assistive rail as he complied, using both for leverage to speed their coupling. He framed a claiming bite against the slick pulse jumping in Azzanadra's throat and hissed.

"Much as I do agree incoherence beautifully becomes you–" His other hand trailed up to his forehead. Sliske pulled until the neck straining under him was a cruel curve to lave his maddened growls upon. " _Stop_ talking, and _I will_."

"Nearly– _finished_ my point." Nothing more than an angry snap of teeth, thrilling. They both shuddered loudly as the ankle hooked at his waist pulled him deeper into clenching heat.

"Would you like me to make you come, or ghost my accounts?" Sliske attempted to impress his frustration literally, a rough grind that forced Azzanadra further up the icy wall. The responding, high whine hardly satisfied, but he smiled through the urgent pants marring his speech anyway. "I can't do both just this moment."

Azzanadra didn't appear able to nod or anything else, really, in his current position, so when he growled, " _do not stop fucking me_ ," that was sufficient instruction.

Sliske found a disciplinary rhythm and followed it, wet kisses a contrast to the wrathful snap of his spine.

In the absense of nagging ridicule those efforts won out. Azzanadra tensed tellingly and Sliske choked back a groan beneath his louder shout as small, hot darts painted their chests; pale streaks that joined others against dark skin, half-washed down the drain.

They slid out from the pocket of the corner, parallel to the frigid hail of water numbing him to stasis. Sliske released his face long enough to swat at the lever, missing by a good amount in his frantic attempt to keep pace with Azzanadra as he started to make abused sounds.

"Control yourself," he rasped, winded, and finally a claw-point snagged the hexagonal glass fixture in such a way that they were bathed in a lukewarm rush, the final efforts of a dedicated water heater. "I'm almost done."

And it was the truth, because a few minutes later Sliske nearly dropped him, rocking earnestly into the arch of his thighs. He loosed a fitful moan at the sudden ease in friction.

“ _There_ , darling,” he rumbled, thrusting shallowly in response to the provoking rush of Azzanadra's inspirations. “Have that.”

"About fucking time," Azzanadra gasped. Right into the damp ridge of an ear, intoxicating.

 _Yes._ Sliske chuckled ominously.  _You're better this way, boneless and mine–_

A curt round of thumps struck the washroom door.

“Just letting you know I'm back.”

They groaned in harmony, foreheads touching briefly as they regarded one another with the same thought.

_Nice while it lasted._

The intrusion was in no way reassuring – nor was it meant to be. It _did_ remind him that he was still holding a man of level height a meter off the floor with nothing but his cock and an unsteady hand, though. Sliske lowered them both – in an act of charity – knowing that in the event Wahisietel decided to invite himself in for something, he would never hear the end of it for leaving Azzanadra speared upon him.

"They had hot cocoa and Darjeeling. I brought up a bit of everything," his brother called, disguising humor behind a surly cough. _Prat_. "I'll uh. Be heating some water for mine."

Sliske huffed, mind abuzz with satiation. The lights in the washroom flickered off and on, a circuitous response to power.

"Electric kettles were a good one," he murmured, still fairly wrapped in his legs as they separated at the waist messier than before. _“Much_ more useful than standing showers.”

"The former. A foregone conclusion of human ingenuity," Azzanadra agreed, recovering in phases. He touched a few claws to his neck to feel around the dark pricks Sliske's keening incisors had left on him. A crescent of dots were already spreading into a heady blemish. Around his wrists, thick rectangles would start to show more obviously soon, the result of his insistence on being restrained.

When Azzanadra finally rose, there was no use in pretending the glory of what they'd done wasn't on full display for him, sat as Sliske was on the floor, and he lifted his face in a knavish grin. “ _Don't_. Now it's _your_ turn to be quiet." Stepping over him, he immediately swiped up a towel from the shower door to cover himself.

Sliske contemplated how things might go if he kissed his arse on the way out.

_I'm almost certain no one will die._

He went for it.

" _ **Never**_ –"

He was right.

Nobody died.

 

* * *

 

It took a while to calm down enough to sit.

Azzanadra reluctantly accepted a steaming mug of black Darjeeling, needing something to wrap his hands around as Sliske whistled show tunes in the bedroom.

_Wanker. Chavy, iniquitous wanker._

“It's reckless, as I know you concur.” Wahisietel imposed on his thoughts quietly. “I'm just hoping he'll listen to someone he actually respects.”

Poorly timed and much too hearty a swallow for the stubborn looseness in his limbs, Azzanadra wore some of his tea.

“One would think you'd know not to place undue faith in his esteem of anyone,” he reprimanded, dabbing at the dark spots on his rumpled blazer with a napkin.

Wahisietel frowned. “I've caught a few sentences here and there. Overheard, stolen, _you_ know how we are. Two ships in the fucking night," he muttered irritably. "Sometimes he holds our lounge hostage to serenade her like that." Illustratively jerking a thumb back toward the hall from his seat at the window, Wahisietel continued. “They get on well. And his little projects are impressive, in their own way. I'd be thrilled he has a hobby that doesn't involve influencing the innocent or commiting international crime if it didn't put him in Zamorak's cross-hairs.”

A more careful sip this time. “He'll give that up eventually. Zamorak.”

When Azzanadra realized his mistake it was too late to rescind.

“What if he's right, though?”

He sighed under his breath, mouth tight as Wahisietel set his cup down and flung his arms around, the same wind up to the same argument that never went anywhere. “Zaros was strong enough–”

“Six years is a long time on this planet, old friend,” he cut in quickly.

Wahisietel spread his claws wide before balling them into fists. “And what of it to him? Us? The blink of an eye–"

 _Oh hell_. "To have evaded _every_ known satellite from _every_ greedily questing government and corporation in the _world_? Every _drone_? I haven't felt him. _No one_ has felt him."

"He could be anywhere! He could be hiding!" His voice lowered to a keen whisper, red irises bright. "Can you imagine how Sliske might change, given the opportunity to follow again? And _you_ , his last, should that not be your utmost expectation?”

The mug in Azzanadra's grip cracked.

They both winced at the shell-brittle scraping of it, murky liquid spurting thinly from imperfections webbing out of the sides.

 _Of course._ “Please,” he huffed, standing to take it to the sink. “One battle at a time. We have to convince someone _living_ to change his ways first.”

Head turning last, he almost walked right into Sliske, smiling faintly from the doorway. Azzanadra forced down a surge of unwanted interest at the sight he made. His bane braced expansive, checkered arms around either side of the only exit from the lounge, hip cocked.

"You're welcome to try," he taunted in a deceptively soothing whisper.

That was a trap if he'd ever heard one. _Challenge not accepted._ Expression neutral, Azzanadra considered the table nearest the flatscreen, cycling silently through the many natural landscapes of Wales. He set his leaking mug on the tray beside the kettle, breaths measured, and reclaimed his chair, reigning in exasperation as Sliske –  _of course_ – followed, seating himself on the coffee table hardly a yard away. Tattered denim legs extended until their feet knocked together, and he fought the urge to crush toes.

"That is why you brought me to the most unpronouncable city on Earth, isn't it?" Sliske smugly side-eyed Wahisietel as he choked on his tea in disagreement and then turned that gaze to him. "So go on. Chastise me. I can't imagine you're capable of faffing about with niceties now," he muttered, hands clasped between his thighs. "Seeing as my work is likely still finding it's way out of your–"

"Alright!" Wahisietel's loafers scuffed the floor length windowpane as he shot to his feet. "Stop. I didn't drag you up north for this, we came together to–"

 _ **Of course**_. Azzanadra groaned. " _Wahi._ "

Predictably, Sliske had already lost it, cackling at the skylight while his brother fumbled through the verbal trap he'd triggered in their discomfort.

"– _damn_ it, Azzanadra. No! Listen," he snapped, tea tag fluttering as he waved his paper cup desperately. "You're on a set course to getting yourself _killed,_  and us with you. We need to address that."

 

* * *

 

"Fine idea. ' _Let's have a row over my lifestyle choices_ '," Sliske chuckled in mockingly high, posh-straight tones, grin a wide wedge and eyes sober as a judge. "I ' _love_ ' to be pelted with unsolicited advice from hypocritical blowhards."

Azzanadra expelled an odious breath through his nose. Chin already canted toward the feet still questing to annoy below him, he dropped his head entirely. "Alright. I'm leaving."  
  
"Oh, hitting and quitting, are we?" Sliske deftly dodged his kick.  
  
Wahisietel's expression grew wan. "This isn't about your upsettingly intimate habits, gentlemen!"

Sliske bothered to look at him a bit closer. Below the dry irritation of a bent-iron snarl his brother was tired. Hints of exhaustion stretched his mouth at the corners and stole the passion from his gaze.

"You have a target on your back," Wahisietel continued, lowering his voice a wit. "And rather than do a bloody thing to protect yourself, you are _flouting_ it."

 _A paper target for a toy gun._ "He's no more powerful than you or I," Sliske groused, palms balanced against the coffee table as he tipped his head back.

"Perhaps in the physical sense." Wahisietel paced the length of the room as he stared at a tall structure beyond the city center. "Not in bodily caliber, no, but in scope or resource? Irrefutably, Zamorak is the most powerful Mahjarrat on Earth."  
  
Sliske felt his nose wrinkle in disgust. Azzanadra took visible offense at the suggestion, thighs tensing, though he made no move to state his discomfort. It was too bad that they were having an actual discussion now; he would have loved to tease him for it. "And so? Here, we don't bend to ritualistic custom."

 _Not until the sun pops. Or the planet goes the way of Mars._  
  
"That _doesn't matter_ to him. The drive to be unimpeachable, without replacement or flaw, is strong in all of us. But none have attained a greater chance at becoming _untouchable_ than he." His brother frowned deeply and the room reacted accordingly, sound dampened as he spoke. "It is a miracle that he _failed_."  
  
If Sliske hadn't just released many weeks worth of pent up frustration with him, he might have allowed the grave nod of Azzanadra's confirmation to roll off his back.

The kettle behind him growled out a few soft wisps of steam. Beyond glass, steep yet rolling green foothills boxed in the calm horizon surrounding the lodge they'd lured him into believing could pass for a half-decent brain-teaser.

As it stood, he was entirely too focused for anyone's safety.

Suppressing the beginnings of real, vulnerable anger, Sliske crossed his arms.

"What the fuck do you propose, then, that I do? Crawl up to his gated piss-off mansion high on a hill, buzz the intercom and beg Enakhra not to take the shot so I can have a word?" He laughed, and it was harsh even to his own ears. "Or better yet, languish in obscurity for however many years it takes for him to realize I don't know anything? That none of us know anything?"  
  
They looked at each other and back to him with noises of agreement.

 _My_. Sliske felt his upper lip curl, confronted by the revelation that he was describing real, sensible options in their worldview. _You do have so little faith in me._  
  
"Not happening."  
  
Azzanadra spoke over Wahisietel as he threw his wrists up and scowled audibly. "Just–  _as I have said_. Unplug for a bit," he enunciated wryly, the warning of true poison dripping from each word. "Stop enchanting impressionable humans with a version of yourself that _isn't real_. Stop _drawing his attention._ Find something discreet and _legal_ to occupy yourself with."

Tirade apparently complete, Azzanadra straightened stiffly and stood.  
  
Joseph Nabanik's stolen visage wove itself around him in moments, a familiar shimmer of skin and sprouting of hair.

Disguised, he brandished a staying, calloused finger when Sliske rose to bar his path. "If you'll excuse me. I have a prior commitment. One that I nearly abandoned to be here."  
  
Affecting a sympathetic pout, Sliske twisted his head to the side. "And I'm _sure_ Berrystrewth will be very understanding of your truancy," he consoled. "Thank you, so much, for wasting everyone's time."  
  
" _Aberystwyth_ ," Azzanadra corrected, automatic, and brushed past him.

Leaning heavily against the window, Wahisietel offered a quiet farewell as the door to the hotel room slammed in the wake of his departure.  
  
His brother stared at him for a moment, as if expecting that he might disappear too. 

"You're a sodding menace," he whispered finally. "But I don't want you to die."  
  
"And I won't." The carpet was soft under his step. Sliske left the room to find his trainers, damning those unsightly drapes while en route to where he thought they might have been cast off in the washroom.

After a few tense minutes had passed he heard the swish of a key card being taken from the coffee table. And then the mechanical click of the hotel room door opening.

"Apparently, check-out is negotiable," Wahisietel called, growing fainter with every word. "At least think about it!"

 

* * *

 

The silence lasted for a couple weeks.

She told herself it was cool.

Powered through finals, caffeinated when she might have tried to sleep otherwise.

Didn't watch ASMR at all. For reasons.

When she finally bothered to check, it seemed Sliske's social media presence had taken a pretty serious nosedive altogether. A tickling whisper of paranoia wondered whether it was her fault, and she alternated between feeling bad about it and _mostly_ ambivalent, until he called her late in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

Felix rarely picked up unknown callers and there was no reason for her to think it would be him. Mailbox empty, the stairs were a mindless ascent home. She squinted at the gray anonymous caller portrait while digging for her keys.

_Maybe it's a prankster. That could be an hour's distraction._

Facing another long evening alone, adrift in the approaching freedom of spring break, it was boredom that compelled her to answer before the last ring. "Hello?"

"Hey there."

She almost dropped her phone. " _Sliske_?"

Heavy with familiarity and encased in the slight tin of someone speaking through the wind, his false scorn curled around her like an old comfort. "And here I was fearing you'd forgotten me. Have a moment, darling?"

"Like that would stop you." She barely managed to shut her front door properly, falling against it with a laugh. “What's good, stranger?”

They sank into the ease of conversation like nothing had ever happened.

Even though, apparently, _a lot_ had happened.

"At least it got me laid."

Felix withheld a horrible snort in favor of retaining the tequila she'd just knocked back. After a burning swallow, she let her delight ring out in scratchy peels. " _Really_? You're _fucking_ welcome. Gods. That sounds like a story."

Sliske looked a little miffed by the immediacy of her acceptance as he stepped off the tube, bumping his headphones in his haste to rearrange the now, in her opinion, legendary hat to better cover his gem.

_Oh. The stares, right._

From the few tinychats they'd shared in public, it appeared to be a common occurrence for people to rubberneck around him. _My irresistable arse,_ he'd joked the first time, and she hadn't mentioned it since.

In addition to being conspicuously powerful aliens, Earth's Mahjarrat population numbered in potentially the low thousands. A theorization based on estimates made by their own and what few willingly contributed to local government census. He could say what he would about her, but Felix had no desire to ever draw that magnitude of attention. The very thought made her ill.

"A gentleman never tells,” Sliske whispered, demure. “But for your edification, there's more than enough of me to go around."

 _Please._ Eyes shut in consternation, another shot preceded her words. "Don't worry about that," Felix replied dryly, and hoped the redness rapidly spreading down her chest would be attributable to drink. "I _am_  very annoyed that your brother saw me naked though. Heard of _locks_? I mean, you could've warned me?"

"My apologies," he appealed, plainly unrepentant, and cleared his throat. She scoffed, rounding the partition seperating her kitchen from the rest of the studio. "It's true. I want you to know. I'm a lot for any one person to handle."

The blinking florescent white of the tube stairwell succumbed to bright orange lensflares that crossed the camera as he surfaced on a street. Sliske's path took him by several darkened businesses, glassy storefronts like obsidian in the night. He smiled down at her through his phone. "And I'd love for this to continue if you would."

Setting the open bottle of Suerte she'd been pouring from down by her bookbag, Felix obediently rolled her eyes and excavated a planner from the tan sack.  _I'm pining after a player._ "Are you almost home?" She stared at the strange suggestions of passing scenery framing his image as she spoke. "Isn't it like midnight there?"

His irises were so stunning in the dark, outshining the streetlights by at least half as he widened his gaze comically. "Why? No, don't tell me. You're deliciously unfulfilled, and now I've made you aware of an obstacle." Grin as sorely missed as it was a source of ire, his voice lowered empathetically. "I'm so sorry, my dear. We'll take care of you soon."

More than a little violently galvanized by the prospect and thinking him serious despite the fact that had _not been_ her meaning at all, she attempted a nonchalant shrug, carrying both phone and planner to her desk. "If you want to believe that, be my guest," Felix murmured, warmer than intended. "Your gift has been working pretty well."

"Oh, _has it now_?" Containing a smile at his rough purr, she flipped through to the calendar for April to scan the dates. Her brows knit in concern when she heard Sliske swear colorfully at a driver. "If that's the case, I might have to call you back before I end up taking down someone's insurance.” In her periphery he was nearing a large, red glow, possibly a train crossing. “But this is _not_ a topic to discard.”

 _Now or never_. It wasn't necessary for her to double check; she knew the itinerary by heart. Her finger tapped the ruled page with her departure time and plans regardless, chest tight as she thought about what he might say. Or do.

Especially in the wake of this new insistency that she not feel threatened by someone she'd never met, which was startling on its own. _Did I sleeptalk some kind of demand to be exclusive?_ Because truthfully, she was terrified of rivals far less concrete. _Time's unrelenting passage. Bad chemistry. Myself._

"Felix. Have I lost you?"

She managed a preparing breath. _This is so much, on_ very _little notice, but don't be mad_ , she begged silently _._

"I'm flying out to Portsmouth to see some family next Friday." It came out in a rush, and Felix wet her lips, embarrassed already.

He was quiet, the faint scrape of wind the only noise from his end.

The buoyant effects of tequila and  _perhaps_ a tiny dose of envy that didn't feel like it belonged were the only fuel for her next words. "For a holiday. And I'm not sure, uh. Because of the hurricanes, the duration of my stay, exactly. But if you'd like–"

"Yes."

Her shabbily constructed proposal died, confused.

When she found the courage to look at him Sliske was stopped at a rail crossing, peering at her with severe concentration through the window of his phone.

A horn echoed in the distance.

Felix chuckled nervously, pressing a hand to one of her burning cheeks. _Maybe I heard him wrong._ "I haven't... posed you a question yet?"

She spied the white gate as it closed behind him. His laugh coiled around every stubborn insecurity clouding her thoughts, and the way he shook his head banished them.

"Whatever you're about to ask," he insisted, eyes crinkling softly at the corners. "My answer is yes."

 

**Author's Note:**

> "I'd like to get away, Junior...  
> ...somewhere alone with you.  
> It could be oh, so gay, Junior.  
> You need a laugh, or two."  
>  _There's A Small Hotel - Pal Joey (1957)_


End file.
